Are flatbed cutters overkill for 6mil vinyl stickers?

[SuperDTF]

I have two s2 class opus cam cutters and I am tired of the misalignment, blades having to be broken in, and just popping stickers in general.... I was looking at some of the flatbed models and wondering if these are overkill. I found some other cutters on Alibaba that look nice as well and wondering if they work with Flexi.

Anyone able to shed some light on the best route to take for these?

 

[Pauly]

Do not buy a chinese / cheap flatbed cutter. if you're going to get something. You want local support.
A summa F1612 is a good place to start. And you can use the twin workflow with your S2 opos.
Or even colex as they're priced well. It is a beast and would be overkill for only stickers.

 

[victor bogdanov]

I prefer cutting stickers on my flatbed Colex, way less dialing in etc compared to roll2roll cutters. Flatbed is good for lower volume, depending on shape can easily cut 5k stickers in a couple hours. If you need consistent 10k+ cut stickers per day then roll2roll is easier/cheaper to scale. I'll only run die cut stickers on my graphtecs if I have big orders that need to be finished asap, otherwise I'll run them on Flatbed idle time

Now if you are cutting squares/rectangles then you can do massive volume on a flatbed by setting up cut files as a grid lines. I have one customer that I do 2" x 4" rectangle stickers and I can cut a whole roll with about 10k stickers on the flatbed in an hour


I have seen some good looking smaller Chinese flatbeds that look like they would be great for small stickers, something like this

https://signoutletstore.com/supply-55-expresscutpro-25-x-34-flatbed-cutter/

 

[jerry369]

A summa F1612 is a good place to start. And you can use the twin workflow with your S2 opos.

Exactly, usually half cutting is done on the roll plotter and through cutting on the flatbed. The roll is much faster and more precise for half cutting while the flatbed is better and faster for through cutting.

Instead, it would be worth checking the cause of the misalignment found on SuperDTF's S2 TC

 

[Pauly]

Exactly, usually half cutting is done on the roll plotter and through cutting on the flatbed. The roll is much faster and more precise for half cutting while the flatbed is better and faster for through cutting.

Instead, it would be worth checking the cause of the misalignment found on SuperDTF's S2 TC

Yes, it would be wise to get to the bottom of the S2 issues. theyre very accurate machines.

 

[Superior_Adam]

I would say the Summa being misaligned needs to be fixed as I have cut rolls of contour cut stickers without any issues on our 30". If we had not bought a Zund, I would have gotten a larger Summa. I will say though I much rather cut on our Zund as is it crazy fast but they are not cheap.

 

[SuperDTF]

The misalignment usually happens when we are cutting anything over 50" in length and when we are doing kiss cut and through cut on same sheet.
I want to start doing magnet cards and decals and custom boxes eventually. TBH die cut stickers are getting kinda boring.

We cut 6mil gf220 and for some reason my blades take time to break in too. If I install a new blade and do my cut tests it is fine at 320g then halfway through the sheet its bad. Do the cut test at 320, bad... increase... Cut sheet again... Same issue.... It usually takes 3 sheets on a new 60 degree blade for it to break in for whatever reason.

 

[SuperDTF]

Exactly, usually half cutting is done on the roll plotter and through cutting on the flatbed. The roll is much faster and more precise for half cutting while the flatbed is better and faster for through cutting.

Instead, it would be worth checking the cause of the misalignment found on SuperDTF's S2 TC

Thanks for making sense of this - I was wondering what he meant by dual workflow.
I am looking at a used colex sxc1717 now - but wondering if it works on Flexi.

 

[Saturn]

They all chip the teensiest bit immediately after you put them on. Hopefully only enough that just a little more force is required, and not so bad that you have to toss it.

I actually have a little burn-in file I run like half a dozen times when I replace a blade. It's just a little spiral CW, then a spiral CCW, nothing crazy, but I do it in hopes of avoiding the surprise of it chipping halfway through a job.

I'd give a 45° blade a shot, and try two/three cuts on top of one another. You should be getting great results on the Summa, but they do require someone to kinda watch and learn their variables over the long haul.

 

[jerry369]

We cut 6mil gf220 and for some reason my blades take time to break in too. If I install a new blade and do my cut tests it is fine at 320g then halfway through the sheet its bad. Do the cut test at 320, bad... increase... Cut sheet again... Same issue.... It usually takes 3 sheets on a new 60 degree blade for it to break in for whatever reason.

The 60° blade is to be avoided for flexcut, it is very sharp and therefore too delicate for through cutting. if the media thickness does not exceed 0.25 mm you can use the 36* double edge otherwise use the 45°.